


Before the Shadows Lengthened, by Greykite

by Carmarthen



Category: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written by request for a fest in a German-language musicals community. “Elisabeth – 1992, Der Tod/Elisabeth, ‘Really, do you not know that all children die sometime?’ Elisabeth is pregnant with her first child.” [An English translation of Greykite's Прежде, чем удлинятся тени.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Shadows Lengthened, by Greykite

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Прежде, чем удлинятся тени](https://archiveofourown.org/works/858589) by [Greykite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greykite/pseuds/Greykite). 



> Thank you to Greykite for permission to post this, and to madame-le-maire for extensive help with the tricky bits.

“All children die sometime. Really, do you not know?”

She shudders and turns.

He appears unexpectedly and silently, as always—but this time her heart does not even skip a beat in warning. She is too focused now on her own feelings—they are new, unusual.

She frowns, looking at him. “Only parents die first,” Elisabeth answers, trying to keep her voice from wavering on the word _die._ “As a rule.”

He—the one people call Death—comes closer. An expression of curiosity appears on his pale face, which is either forever young or simply ageless. “It is so,” he says, “But you do not care…do you? You are happy.”

She suppresses the natural desire to cover her clearly pregnant belly with her hands. “I myself decide what to feel.”

“You wanted freedom.”

“And I will be free.”

“Yet you…bind yourself. These feelings. The world—” He traces his hand in the air as if delineating the borders around it. He is very close, so that her breath freezes in her throat. Now she does not want to move forward.

The smoothness of his voice and movements still captivate her, as ever—and she has no time to react as he places his hand on her belly. Elisabeth wants to shrink back—her first instinct—but something prevents her. She takes a deep breath. The touch should have been cold, heavy, like inevitability—but instead it is imperceptible, almost weightless. The expression of concentration on his face would make her smile, if Elisabeth did not know who really stood nearby.

She looks at his hand—finely made, without the least flaw, beauty turning into its opposite—something that was never alive resting on what is alive twice over. _Why is she not afraid?_

Why does he do anything?

Why does he come to her in his strange way? _Why—anything?_

Elisabeth looks up and meets the eyes of Death.

* * *

…in her eyes is the reflection of Doom—the Doom of the Hapsburgs, the monarchy, this part of the world. At least that remains the same, always remains.

At times she seems to him quite like himself, at other times—on the contrary, very different. All too human.

He never claimed that he understood people.

“Strange…” he says quietly. There is nothing notable in this. Just a future human child; its mother does not give it even a shadow of the Doom which is in herself. Nothing special, but he tried to understand all the same. The curious thing is that he still feels something—not for her, for _his_ Elisabeth, but through her.

But all the same he does not understand, as she can, how all of this is happening. After all, she had needed something else. He had noticed that, before.

The doom of this part of the world. No ordinary woman. Never ordinary—not ordinary, otherwise—what attraction for him, Death?

He removes his hand, she sighs—it appears to be relief. “Why?” he asks, nevertheless, continuing to stare.

“Because I am human. Really, you do not understand?” Elisabeth laughs, softly and sadly. The expression in her dark eyes is such that he takes a step back. Human.

_…and her destiny is the same as that of all people._

Death dismisses this thought.

It is impossible.

He knows that she remains human, of course, but something about him does not believe it. He knows why—because in the past this never happened to him: what people call _love._

He holds out his gloved hand to her face; Elisabeth turns, not allowing him to touch her. Frozen fingers, caressing the air around her—an almost affectionate gesture.

“If your child dies soon?”

“I will know that you killed it. Because I did not go to you,” she says.

He shakes his head. _Again._ Her understanding is too human. That is what Death does—it is his nature. She, too, has something like that.

But he is almost hurt that she does not understand.

Elisabeth shudders, as if reading a shadow of that emotion in his icy eyes. “Leave now,” she whispers.

He slowly nods and backs away, still watching her.

“No matter how much awaits me—I will love—the child, my husband, life. You cannot change anything here, even if you stood at my back forever,” she says evenly, in the voice of the Empress, almost without fear—not true fact yet, but a premonition of triumph in that role.

_It is not I who stands at your back. You yourself are drawn to part of my nature,_ meine liebe. _No matter how much binds you to the world—you’re just destroying it. Is it really so difficult to accept yourself and what you feel?_ Death thinks, forgetting for a moment that she—unlike him—cannot hear thoughts—before he disappears into the shadows.

He will return in three years. But even he does not yet know that.

**Author's Note:**

> **Translator's Note:**
> 
> Elisabeth's first child, Archduchess Sophie, died aged two in 1857, while the family was in Budapest.
> 
> This is my first attempt at a translation and I am very, very far from fluent in Russian, so I would greatly appreciate any corrections. I started out with a fairly literal translation and then tweaked it slightly for more typical English grammar and clarity, but there were definitely places where I may have missed Russian idiom or misunderstood what Greykite meant.


End file.
